In Reply to: Re: Re: test posted by ScubaBob on January 06, 2008 at 14:03:25:

Date: 01/12/2008

Time:  8:52am

Dive Location: Laguna Beach

Dive Site: Dead Man's Reef/Shaw's Cove

Viz: Crescent ~5'  / Shaw's 10ish'

Water Temp: 55-57°f

Max Depth: 64' / 48'

Bottom time: 48/59 min.

Buddy: Gordon from the U.K.

Got a call to conduct a Discover Local Diving on Saturday. We planned to do Dead Man's Reef for the first dive. Drove past Shaw's and didn't see many cars. Crescent was quite busy and saw many friends and familar faces. We walked down and checked out the conditions and found 2-3' with the occasional 4'. Wasn't too bad, and we figured we could time a good entry. Went and grabbed a coffee prior to suiting up, and returned to even more divers getting ready. Our entry seemed to be going well. The surf zone was a bit further out with the tide and wave size. Before I could make it past the break a wave came. I turned sideways and got spun around a bit, which wasn't too bad, but the worst part was it grabbed my heavy video housing and smacked it into my face (leaving a nice cut that bled for a couple minutes before the cold water took care of it.) On our long kick out we were told by some other divers that viz wasn't that great. We decided to continue, feeling committed at that point. Dropped into about 60' to find about 5' viz. It was more like a dusk dive with everything on the reef sorta blending together in an ugly brown hue. Surge and bad viz was a bad intro to local SoCal diving - and I felt bad for my U.K. buddy.

Second dive was at Shaw's. The protection there made for a much easier entry - though surge was still pretty bad. Didn't make it through the arch way, but found quite a bit of life on the reef on the way out to turn-around. Stopped by Shelly's for a closer look. I figured there would be more life around her now as there has been a lot of growth on the platform and statue. After much much closer examination - saw that several new nudi inhabitants were there - Flabellina trilineanata. These guys were really really tiny (I'd say about 1/2"). Conditions made video taking a little tough (as you can see below) but I managed to capture a few of the highlights.

Cowry Shells 

Limacia cockerelli

Flabellina trilineanata

Flabellina trilineanata 

 

Video